A Case Study on Sustainable Operations Strategies within Knowledge Intensive Service Industry

The empirical objective of this research is to evaluate manufacturing strategy of a company in information technology segment by using two independent methods: "sense and respond" and "manufacturing strategy index" and validate them against each other by comparing the results. In Addition, this research also measures sustainable competitive advantage of the company and gives a prediction on future development. The data collection is gathered from a middle size software company with approximately 250 employees. The result indicates that the Company's strategy belongs to Prospector type which focuses on product quality and customer satisfaction. The study also verifies that the Company is dynamically allocating its resources in order to adapt to the changes in the business environment so that it can follow the targeted operations strategy. However, due to the rapid development in geography and in quantity, the firm is taking relatively high operating risk and the development potential is narrower than expected. The result of method validation proves that there is a relation between sense and respond method and manufacturing strategy index method regarding operations strategy. The two methods indicate similar outcome concerning the Company's operational strategy and its competitiveness in the market.